Thomas Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He
and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville,
California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably
the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The
restaurant is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the
Top 50 Restaurants of the World. In 2005, he was awarded the three star
rating in the inaugural Michelin Guide for New York for his restaurant Per Se,
and in 2006, he was awarded three stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide to the
Bay Area for The French Laundry. He is the only American chef to have been
awarded simultaneous three star Michelin ratings for two different restaurants.
He currently holds 7 Michelin stars total: 3 at Per Se, 3 at The French
Laundry, and 1 at Bouchon. Early life and career
Keller's mother was a restaurateur who employed Thomas as help when her cook
got sick. Four years after his parents divorced, the family moved east and
settled in Palm Beach, Florida. In his teenage summers, he worked at the Palm
Beach Yacht Club starting as a dishwasher and quickly moving up to
cook. It was here he discovered his passion for cooking and perfection in a
hollandaise sauce. During summers he worked as a cook in
Rhode Island. One summer he was discovered by French-born Master Chef
Roland Henin and was tasked to cook staff meals at The Dunes Club. Under
Henin's study, Keller learned the fundamentals of classical French
cooking. After The Dunes Club, Keller worked various cooking positions in
Florida and soon became the cook at a small French restaurant called La Rive
in the Hudson River valley in Catskill, New York. Thomas worked alone with the
couple's grandmother as prep cook. Given free rein, he built a smokehouse to cure
meats, developed relationships with local livestock purveyors and learned to
cook entrails and offal under his old mentor, Roland Henin, who would drop by
on occasional weekends. After three years at La Rive, unable to buy it from
the owners, he left and moved to New York and then Paris, apprenticing at
various Michelin-starred restaurants. After returning to America in 1984, he
was hired as chef de cuisine at La Reserve in New York, before leaving to
open Rakel in early 1987. Rakel's refined French cuisine catered to the
expensive tastes of Wall Street executives and received a two-star
review from The New York Times. Its popularity waned as the stock market
bottomed out and at the end of the 1980s, Keller left, unwilling to
compromise his style of cooking to simple bistro fare.
The French Laundry Following the split with his partner at
Rakel, Keller took various consultant and chef positions in New York and Los
Angeles. In the spring of 1992 he came upon an old French steam laundry in
Yountville, California that had been converted to a restaurant. He spent
nineteen months raising $1.2 million from acquaintances and investors to
purchase the restaurant, then opened in 1994. Over the next few years the
restaurant earned numerous awards, including the James Beard Foundation,
gourmet magazines, the Mobil Guide, and the Michelin Guide.
In April 2009, Keller became engaged to longtime girlfriend and former general
manager at the French Laundry, Laura Cunningham.
Other restaurants and pursuits = Food and dining=
After the success of The French Laundry, Thomas and his brother, Joseph Keller,
opened Bouchon in 1998. Located down the street from The French Laundry, it
serves moderately priced French bistro fare, with Bouchon Bakery opening next
door a few years later. Keller has joked in the past that the motivation for
Bouchon's opening was to give him somewhere to eat after work at The
French Laundry. On January 26, 2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon in
Las Vegas. On February 16, 2004, Keller's much anticipated Per Se
restaurant opened in the Time Warner Center complex in New York under the
helm of Keller's Chef de Cuisine, Jonathan Benno. Per Se, which was
designed from scratch and custom-built as part of the overall construction
process, was an immediate hit on the New York restaurant scene, with reservations
booked months in advance and publications including The New Yorker
and The New York Times giving rave reviews. The latest restaurant, "ad
hoc", opened in September 2006 in Yountville with a different fixed price
comfort food dinner served family style every night. Originally intended to be a
temporary project while Keller planned his lifelong dream restaurant for the
location, serving hamburgers and wine, he decided to make ad hoc permanent and
find a new location for the hamburger restaurant due to its overwhelming
popularity. Yountville, CA: ad hoc, Bouchon, Bouchon
Bakery, The French Laundry New York: Bouchon Bakery, Per Se
Las Vegas: Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery Beverly Hills: Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery
Prior to the opening of The French Laundry, Thomas Keller started a small
olive oil company called EVO, Inc. in 1992, with his girlfriend of the time,
to distribute Provençal-style olive oil and red wine vinegar. Recently, Keller
started marketing a line of signature white Limoges porcelain dinnerware by
Raynaud called Hommage Point that he helped design and a collection of silver
hollow ware by Christofle. He has also attached his name to a set of signature
knives manufactured by MAC. Keller is the president of the Bocuse
d'Or U.S. team and was responsible for recruiting and training the 2009
candidates. The former French Laundry Chef de Cuisine Timothy Hollingsworth
won the Bocuse d'Or USA semi-finals in 2008, and represented the U.S. in the
world finals in January 2009 under Keller's supervision where he placed
6th, equaling the best performance of the U.S. in the contest to date. On
describing his reasons for accepting the Bocuse d'Or Team USA presidency, Keller
stated, "When Chef [Paul] Bocuse calls you on the phone and says he’d like you
to be president of the American team, you say, ‘Oui, chef’. He’s the role
model, the icon". In 2012 he announced he was at the point
of his career when it was time to step away from the kitchen. The important
thing, he said, is to make sure to give to young chefs the right things, the
right mentoring because "if we're not truly working to raise the standards of
our profession, then we're not really doing our job".
= Publishing and film= In 1999, Thomas Keller published The
French Laundry Cookbook, which he considers his definitive book on
cuisine. That year it won three International Association of Culinary
Professionals awards for Cookbook of the Year, Julia Child "First Cookbook"
Award, and Design Award. In 2004 he published "The Bouchon Cookbook,"
although he gives most of the credit to Bouchon chef Jeffrey Cerciello. Other
cookbooks that he has written or contributed are The Food Lover's
Companion to the Napa Valley, Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide and Ad Hoc
at Home. He provided an introduction or foreword to The Vineyard Kitchen: Menus
Inspired by the Seasons by Maria Helm Sinskey, "Happy in the Kitchen" by
Michel Richard, "Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts" by Claire Clark, the new
publication of "Ma Gastronomie" by Fernand Point, "Charcuterie: The Craft
of Salting, Smoking, and Curing" by Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. He is
also featured in "My Last Supper" by Melanie Dunea
Working on the film Spanglish, Keller designed and taught star Adam Sandler to
cook what is often called "the world's greatest sandwich", as a plausible
example of what a talented bachelor gourmet might cook for himself. The
sandwich resembles a typical BLT, with the addition of a fried egg. Keller
served as a consultant for the 2007 Pixar animated film Ratatouille,
allowing the producer to intern in the French Laundry kitchen and designing a
fancy layered version of ratatouille, "confit byaldi", for the characters to
cook. In the American version he plays a cameo appearance as a restaurant patron.
Awards Best American Chef: California, James
Beard Foundation, 1996 Outstanding Chef: America, James Beard
Foundation, 1997 Chef of the Year, Bon Appétit Magazine,
1998 Voted #1 – Top Food, Zagat Guide to the
Bay Area, 1998–2003 Five-Star Award, Mobil Travel Guide,
1999–2004 Favorite Restaurant – Restaurant
Experts' Poll, Food & Wine Magazine, 2000
Top Restaurant for Food, Wine Spectator Magazine, 2000
America's Best Chef, TIME Magazine, 2001 Outstanding Wine Service Award, James
Beard Foundation, 2001 Outstanding Service Award, James Beard
Foundation, 2003 Best Restaurant in the World, Restaurant
Magazine's Top 50 Restaurants of the World, 2003, 2004
Best Restaurant in the Americas, Restaurant Magazine's Top 50 Restaurants
of the World, 2005–2008 Best New Restaurant, James Beard
Foundation, 2005 Michelin Guide New York, 3 Stars for Per
Se, November 2005 – 2015 Michelin Guide Bay Area, 3 Stars for The
French Laundry, 2006–2015 Michelin Guide Bay Area, 1 Star for
Bouchon, 2007–2015 Gayot Top 40 Restaurants in the US 2004
– 2010 Gayot Top 40 Restaurants in the US 2010
Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor, presented by Chef Paul Bocuse on March
29, 2011 in NYC Lifetime Achievement Award Restaurant
Magazine's Top 50 Restaurants of the World
Culinary Hall of Fame Induction. Bibliography
Keller, T. Bouchon Bakery. Artisan Publishers, 2012. ISBN 978-1-57965-435-1
Keller, T. Ad Hoc at Home. Artisan Publishers, 2009. ISBN 978-1-57965-377-4
Keller, T. Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide. Artisan Publishers, 2008. ISBN
1-57965-351-0 Keller, T. Bouchon. Artisan Publishers,
2004. ISBN 1-57965-239-5 Keller, T. The French Laundry Cookbook.
Artisan Publishers, 1999. ISBN 1-57965-126-7
References Further reading
Keller, Thomas. The French Laundry Cookbook. Artisan Publishers, 1999. ISBN
1-57965-126-7 Ruhlman, Michael. The Soul of a Chef:
The Journey Toward Perfection. Penguin Books, 2001. ISBN 0-14-100189-5
Keller, Thomas. Bouchon. Artisan Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-57965-239-5
Severson, Kim. "A Rat with a Whisk and a Dream." New York Times, June 13, 2007.
Keller, Thomas. Under Pressure. Artisan Publishers, 2008. ISBN 978-1-57965-351-4
Keller, Thomas. Ad Hoc at Home. Artisan Publishers,2009. ISBN 1-57965-377-4
Keller, Thomas. Rouxel, Sebastien. Bouchon Bakery . Artisan Publishers,
2012. ISBN 978-1-57965-435-1 External links
Thomas Keller on Said Search – Searchable list of Thomas Keller
Interviews Interview by Restaurant Insider
magazine: January 2006 Charlie Rose interview: March 26, 2008
Google Authors: Thomas Keller: May 19, 2009
60 Minutes: Inside Thomas Keller's Restaurants: November 20, 2011
60 Minutes: Visiting the Theater of the Mouth: February 11, 2009